The Holocaust and the Liberal Imagination: A Social and Cultural History

The Holocaust and the Liberal Imagination explains, without condemning, the responses and reactions of the democratic world to the attempted destruction of European Jewry. Concentrating on the impact of the Holocaust on ordinary people in Western democracies it examines the actions of the nation–state in the light of popular responses. The disciplines of social, cultural, gender and labor history, previously marginalized in Holocaust studies, are employed to add a vital new dimension to the existing literature. The approach is comparative, especially with regard to the Britain and the US, and adopts a secular chronology covering the sixty–year period from the Nazi rise to power to the present day. This powerful study argues that the Holocaust is not simply a German, Jewish or continental history but a neglected part of the experience of many countries. It is consequently an important contribution to Anglo–American social and cultural history as well as an account of the Holocaust.

Acknowledgements. Preface. Introduction: The Holocaust in Global Perspective and as Social History. Part I: 1933–1939 :. 1. Liberal Culture and the Nazi Persecution of the Jews, 1933–1939. 2. Their Brothers′ (and Sisters′) Keepers?: The Nazi Persecution of the Jews and the Labour Movement. 3. An Alien Occupation: Domestic Service and the Jewish Crisis, 1933 to 1939. Part II: The Second World War: . 4. Liberal Culture and the Contemporary Confrontation with the Destruction of European Jewry. 5. From the ′Enemy Within′ to ′This Bestial Policy of Cold–Blooded Extermination′: Britain, the United States and the Jews, September 1939 to December 1942. 6. Rules of the Game: Britain, the United States and the Holocaust, 1943 to 1945. Part III: The Post–War World: . 7. Liberal Culture and the Postwar Confrontation with the Shoah. Conclusion.

Tony Kushner is Marcus Sieff Lecturer in the Department of History at the University of Southampton. He teaches in the area of race and immigration history and Holocaust studies and has published books on the subject of British antisemitism, Anglo–Jewish history, minority studies, racism and Facism.

"An outstanding contribution to the history of the Holocaust and the basis for further research." Mark Levene, University of Warwick "Scholarly, readable, informative and exhaustively researched book. A formidable contribution to the study of the bystander in Holocaust history." Jewish Chronicle "This is a wonderful book, written with passion and minute scholarship combined. I could not put it down. It depresses, challenges, and reinterprets Holocaust history in the light of what the British and Americans did and thought." Times Educational Supplement "This book is not only a first–rate history but also very timely. Indespensable background reading for anybody who wants to share in creating a multicultural society. It is not simple history: it is about people. But is committed history written by a master–historian." Jewish Socialist